For a side project, I’ve been giving recommendations for Sunday-sized crosswords. Here are five from the New York Times I found particularly praiseworthy.
Spoilers ahead!
Abridged Too Far, January 15, 2023, Michael Schlossberg.
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Cine2Nerdle and other exercises that play on the similarity of different stories. Schlossberg found a way to play with that idea in compact spaces: take a longer story title like A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, “find” the word MEDEA hiding inside it (kangaroo-joey style), and then come out with “Play about love and heartbreak in ancient Greece [1605, 431 B.C.]” as the clue. Everything but the dates describes both plays, although the 1605 A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a harmless romp where everyone gets to go home happy and the 431 B.C. Medea is, um, not.
There’s also “Timeless children's classic about country dwellers' friendships” for THE WIND AND THE WILLOWS/HEIDI [1908, 1881], “Magnum opus about a young man, family and the concept of free will [1866, 1965]” for CRIME AND PUNISHMENT/DUNE, “Coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy and his isolation [1951, 1986]” for THE CATCHER IN THE RYE/HATCHET, and “Tale about soldiers and treachery in southern Europe [1940, 1603]” for FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS/OTHELLO. To be honest, some of these clues are on the vague side, but the overall concept is so neat that I’m prepared to forgive a lot.
Cheap Thrills, February 12, 2023, Christina Iverson and Samuel A. Donaldson
Most crosswords have no more than one visual gimmick, but Iverson and Donaldson use four of them to express the term “economizing,” including CUTTING CORNERS with a SAW and AXE, MAKING ENDS MEET with CAN, BUM, ASS, and BUTT, STRETCHING A BUCK with SSIINNGGLLEE, and PINCHING PENNIES with BI(CENT)ENNIAL (CENT)ER. And “four for the price of one” is economizing too!
Name Dropping, Sunday, April 30, 2023, Lewis Rothlein and Jeff Chen
Rothlein and Chen hit on a brilliant conceit with this one: although the grid would have you believe its longer down answers are CHARDONNAY, BROKE THE LAW, SHERMAN TANK, BOW AND ARROW, TRICK ENDING, and FINE, THANKS…to make sense of the clues, you have to “drop” the first names in those answers, turning them into CHARY, BROKAW, STANK, BORROW, TENDING, and FINKS. But the names don’t disappear…they “drop down” to complete LADY MADONNA, TAKE THE L, FLY FISHERMAN, HOTEL RWANDA, KUBRICK, and ELIZABETHAN.
Love “TAKE THE L” especially. Most puzzle designs lose steam right at the end, after the last big across has been completed and before the last few downs are. Not this one!
Flying Colors, June 4, 2023, Rafael Musa
My dad and I solve the NYT Sundays from a local paper’s reprints. So we missed out on this one, which really needs color to make it work.
Seven lines in the grid contain two answers each, the untinted answer describing the tinted one in a punny way. The red-tinted ON/OFF, for instance, describes two electrical STATES, so its companion answer is RED STATES.
The Will Shortz era of puzzles began with another rainbow theme back in 1993, so it’s nice to see it continue thirty years later. But this rainbow-themed puzzle’s debut as Pride Month began feels like a statement—making it even more of a shame that this grid wasn’t reprinted in the RED STATES.
Words, Words, Words: A Themeless, June 11, 2023, Sam Ezersky
This grid’s number of answers—118—is the smallest yet seen in an NYT Sunday grid. Themeless puzzles need a lot of fun answers to justify their free-association, but Ezersky delivers with the likes of RED HOT POKER, JUST KIDDING, ALGAL BLOOM, TIKI BARS, and WON THE WAR. Some designers think crosswords need a high “Scrabble score” to be entertaining, but entries like AMO, AMAS, AMAT and WENT TOE TO TOE highlight a more enlightened approach.